Thanksgiving table

Hi all and Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians. That's right folks. Here in good old Canada, we celebrate the holiday much earlier and as a result we are all much more sane, calm, and reasonable at Christmas.

Anyway, I got inspired the other day by a trip to Pier 1 and decided I could do just as good a job with table decor  for a much better price.

I headed home and created these great little treat box/place cards and napkin rings to match.

First, using the box maker from Stampin'Up! and some retired extra heavy designer paper, I made the little 2"x2" boxes. Each one holds two Lindor chocolates perfectly. I wrapped them with burlap       ribbon using a hot glue gun, then continued with the glue gun adding fall colored leaves from an            inexpensive garland (Michaels) and a pine cone from my own yard.                                                    

A note here about the pine cones. They were a bit damp and closed up when I picked them up, so I decided to Put them into the microwave for 2 minutes. This solved three problems. I dried them out, opened up the individual 'petals' and killed any tiny bugs hiding inside them. You can see the before and after here.                                                                                                                                      

 I used the same burlap ribbon to make the napkin rings. I added some bronze colored  wired                net/ribbon, then went on to add the same leaves and pine cones.  That is pretty much it. Very simple

but quite effective and so much less expensive than the store bought version.                                      

                                                                                                                                                           

 

A moose is loose in the hoose.

That was my husband`s comment when he saw this card. It is a line from a recent episode of the TV series, Mrs. Brown`s Boys. Apparently, according to Mrs Brown, this is how Canadians talk.

Anyway, I attended a needle craft and scrap booking fair last weekend and purchased this cute little fellow that is one of a series of stamps by Sue Coccia called Animal Spirit Stamps. I had the opportunity to make a card using the frog from the same series, but chose to purchase the moose because we have these guys passing through our yard on a regular basis.

I stamped him on white cs (4 1é4 x 5 3é4) with cocoa archival ink. I also stamped him randomly around the outer edge of another piece of white (5 1é4 x 6 3é4). Then I applied Rusty Hinge distress ink with a sponge applicator to both layers in circular motion from the outter edges inwards, leaving the top mat lighter towards the middle. I used the same treatment on a 3`x1 scrap of white cs and stamped the words from a retired SU set. Finally, I darkened the edges with Walnut Stain distress ink and the sponge. The cs for the mat and card base (5 1é2 x 7) is Cajun Craze from SU, also distress with Walnut Stain.

The frayed burlap ribbon is from SU, distressed with the Ranger ink, and the brads are from my stash. This will be a great card for a male birthday. I will be making more of these and will probably have to keep a list of who I give it to so that I don`t duplicate!!